There are potentially effective treatments for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), but they only work in 20 to 40 percent of cases. In a paper published today in Leukemia, a Nature journal, a UT Health Science Center researcher has pinpointed a protein that could play a key, previously unknown role in the development of pediatric AML — promising new information in the quest to treat and cure childhood leukemias. AML starts at the point when cells mature into different kinds of blood cells. In AML, the cancerous cells grow and proliferate in an abnormal way, and they fail to develop, or differentiate, into normal functioning white blood cells. Also, high levels of a protein called WTAP contribute to abnormal cell behavior, observed Sanjay Bansal, Ph.D., a researcher at the Greehey Children's Cancer Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.